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Wine.com Toasts New $15 Million Funding

SAN FRANCISCO — Wine.com, the nation’s leading online wine retailer, has raised $15 million from existing investors. The site says it is already profitable with over $100 million in annual revenue and grew 25% in the quarter ending June 30, double its 5-year average annual growth rate. The company is majority owned by Baker Capital, a New York-based private equity firm.

Wine.com delivers in 1-2 days to most addresses, offering date-certain delivery and the convenience of shipping to 6,000 FedEx and Walgreens local pick-up sites.

The company is also announcing two major new releases:

New Website – Released last week, Wine.com’s new website offers a modern, streamlined design with easier filtering capabilities, more granular geographic regions and varietals, enhanced wine and winery content, and a consistent feature set and user experience across all device types — computer, tablet and phone.

New Mobile App – Recently released in the Apple App Store, Wine.com’s new mobile app has quickly achieved a 5 star rating, making it the top rated wine app. The app includes a new label scanner, an enhanced wine database, live chat wine experts and all the purchasing capability of Wine.com’s full website.

The company attributes its accelerating growth to improvements in its customer experience, including:

Biggest Selection – The Wine.com selection has doubled again to over 17,000 wines and counting — 15 times the average specialty wine store and 30 times the average grocery store – exposing customers to wine from all regions, varietals and price points.

Live Chat Service – Wine.com is unique in offering live chat wine experts, non-commissioned and based in San Francisco and New York, available 7 days/week to help customers discover new wine with confidence.

Convenient Delivery – Customers have the option of shipping to 6,000 FedEx and Walgreens locations for local pickup on their schedule, especially helpful due to the adult signature requirement.

“Wine.com’s rapid growth is a clear indication that the company is aligned with emerging trends in the beverage alcohol space,” said Danny Brager, Senior Vice President, Beverage Alcohol Practice at Nielsen. “As the wine market continues to shift online, Wine.com is tapping into key growth areas such as e-commerce and mobile, alongside the rising influence of millennials – critical components for today’s $33.6 billion U.S. wine market.”

“It’s still very early in the game,” said Rich Bergsund, Wine.com CEO. “With this capital, we can expand our efforts to innovate and leverage technology to help consumers discover and buy great wine. We’ve sold and shipped nearly a billion dollars worth of wine to date, but we feel like a startup, hungry to earn the trust of customers of all ages and levels of wine knowledge.”